パーフェクトブルー / Perfect Blue

This 1997 animated film was for some reason quite heavily promoted over here five or six years ago. It’s dated in several ways, not least of which being the notion that any young idol could be clueless about the Internet, but it’s still a very powerful work, and something of a mind-fuck.

When a pop star wants to make a transition to being an actress, those responsible for tarnishing her pure image, making her act in rape scenes or do nude photoshoots, start to be picked off in grisly ways. But she herself is losing grip on reality, and unsettling cuts and disjointed scenes which may or may not be real disorient the watcher: for all the lack of subtlety in talking reflections and repeated waking-up scenes, the idea that possibly pop star Mima really is the character she was acting and the fiction is what was presented as real life is appealing.

Some impressive fast-paced animation and unflinching presentations of sex and violence rather than being gratuitous actually demand to be taken seriously, which was surprising. It was a bit unconvincing that three separate pivotal characters are quite mad, and the identity of the ultimate antagonist was, for me at least (and the friends I watched it with, since I piped up with it as soon as it occurred to me) far too obvious, but it was a striking, mature and memorable film, different from what I was expecting but surprisingly good, and quite a leap from the average anime film.

(originally written 4.1.08, before I had anything but a vague notion of who Kon Satoshi was - though I had already written about him in my impressions of Millennium Actress.)

妄想代理人/ Mousou Dairinin / Paranoia Agent

While I’d heard of the titles of Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, it was probably only when Paranoia Agent (like the films, animated by Madhouse) began to garner attention and gain a wide Western following in 2004-2005 that I heard the name of Satoshi Kon put forward as one of anime’s premier directors. And while since then I’ve been meaning to watch the show, only earlier this year, after having seen both of those films, did I begin to watch it.

The series was released after Tokyo Godfathers, and contains traces of all three films: the realism and temperance of harshness with humour and warmth of that latter film, the pastiche and easy transition between real and fantastical worlds of Millennium Actress, and the darkness and heightened emotions of Perfect Blue. In particular, the story of three unlikely companions in a suicide club very directly echoes Tokyo Godfathers. On the other hand, it is clear that many of the ideas that go into this series are ones that fit on television far better than they would in a feature film, allowing for many radical changes in style, different points of view and stories that unfold and satisfy in twenty minutes where they might grow stale in eighty. Interestingly, some of the things that made me feel dissatisfied with Paprika are also here: while there may be more depth in presenting a world where fantasy and reality really have melded rather than offering a rational explanation, if it has the feeling of simply ‘winging it’ and not really putting any thought into how and why these paranormal events have occurred, that smacks of bad writing to me and leaves me unsatisfied. Such is the case here, although as it affects only the last few minutes of the last episode, it can pass.

For while Paranoia Agent is episodic and prides itself on stylistic changes, it is also coherent and stylistically consistent. The story revolves around the figure of ‘Shounen Batto’, translated as ‘Lil’ Slugger’ for English-language versions, which is probably a good way to translate something quite awkward to render into English without sounding like a Batman reference. A young boy on golden skates, he seems to appear to those ‘backed into a corner’ in their lives and attacks them with a bent metal baseball bat. Two very different police officers pursue the case, while more and more people fall victim to the strange and increasingly supernatural assailant. Meanwhile, the first victim, a young woman struggling to think of a new character to follow up her incredibly successful mascot dog may be key to it all…

Only a few episodes directly deal with the plot. Others may feature it obliquely, while some are almost completely distinct. Inevitably, some episodes aren’t up to the standard of others: ones about the prostitute or the runner with the tape of the Maromi anime show cannot match up to brilliant episodes like those with the fantasy world, the bullied schoolboy, the suicide club or the police inspector’s wife commanding such gravitas sitting in seiza and talking.

When the series misses, it’s good, solid seinen anime. But when it’s on form, each episode is as good as almost any animated short I’ve seen. That makes this show really something special, and it’s the kind of thing we need more of today, amidst a storm of brainless moé and revived kiddy franchises. Alas, save perhaps Kaiba and Dennou Coil, I’ve not seen anything come close since the second half of Ergo Proxy, and that was almost five years ago, now.

Satoshi Kon passed away far too early, but there’s no arguing with his accomplishments, or small but incredibly bright legacy as a director. I can only hope his stature will have an effect on the ambition of current anime directors.

千年女優/Sennen Jyoyuu/Millennium Actress

Judging from the fact that I got this DVD free in the goodie bag from Virgin Megastores’ Naruto Cosplay Event, I’m guessing Millennium Actress’s sales weren’t quite what they were hoped to be. Indeed, it got nothing near the amount of hype Kon Satoshi’s last film, Perfect Blue, managed to receive. And this is a shame, because Millennium Actress is not only an excellent and rather clever little film, but is in fact one of the best animated movies I have ever seen – and I’ve seen a fair few in my time.

A documentary filmmaker and his cameraman seek out the reclusive actress Fujiwara Chiyoko, who disappeared from the public eye after becoming one of Japan’s premier actresses in the 40s, 50s and 60s. In a way that is far more like theatre than cinema, once Chiyoko starts to relate her life story, the filmmaker and his cameraman become enveloped in a flashback, able to see it and interact with it, with flashes of ‘reality’ returning at times to show us that really, Chiyoko is just re-enacting her story with the help of the director, who seems to have more of a connection to the fading actress than that of simple admirer. Because she was an actress, she steps into many of her past roles, her real life and that of her characters seeming to intertwine, allowing her to appear in a multitude of guises and the movie to take on a variety of styles, which is a joy to watch. We see all the great staples of Japanese cinema – the Kurosawa-like feudal samurai/ninja movies, the suppressed maiko in a geisha house, the apocalyptic war film, even a brief snippet of a Gojira-like monster rampaging – and throughout, Chiyoko is searching for her first love. It’s a bit far-fetched, this endless quest for a man Chiyoko knew as a teenager and remained in love with for her entire life, a bit like the cheesy love story in Memoirs of a Geisha, but the point was to have a simple plot strand that could carry the central concept of a girl stepping into a multitude of roles at different stages in her life, allowing us to see her grow older as well as adopting the costumes from many different periods, while around her the same motifs are repeated to various degrees of subtlety – the film director doing the same at her side, and a bit of level-headed comic relief being provided by the goofy cameraman.

Millennium Actress is a film-lover’s film, and to really enjoy it, it helps to be familiar with the kind of films that are popular enough in Japan for their settings to have seeped into public consciousness, the kinds that are always returned to for historical dramas, though a pretty general knowledge is enough – one doesn’t need to be able to spot Shinsengumi coats to understand a general time period. Animation fans also have much to admire, for while there are few displays of animation pyrotechnics (though they do exist), it’s in the little details that one can observe just how good MadHouse’s animation was here, in the girl slipping over while running and pushing herself back up, or the posture of a woman vacuuming.

The idea is simple and well-executed, the characters charming and the canvas uniquely both broad and intimate. The music is idiosyncratic and might make the film date badly, but works quite nicely. I recommend this film quite highly.

(originally written 24.06.07)

Paprika

Kon Satoshi’s recent death has probably affected me more than the passing of any other director since Kubrick, and in fact probably more than that. Having become one of the three or four most prominent anime directors alive, I felt he was on the brink of international fame, and that with a few more films he might rival Miyazaki in the Western mindset and perhaps help Japanese animation to be recognised as increasingly sophisticated and adult-oriented. And then a few days ago, I was genuinely shocked to hear the news he had passed away, apparently suddenly and without warning, his latest film The Dream Machine unfinished.

Last night a final blog entry from Kon himself was disseminated around the internet and quickly translated. It stands as one of the most moving pieces of writing I have ever read. He knew that he was in the advanced stages of cancer and had come to terms with his imminent death at the age of just 46. He detailed how he and his wife reacted to the news of how close he was to death, how he thought he would not be able to see his parents again but managed to recover from pneumonia for long enough to see them, and his regrets over how The Dream Machine cannot possibly be what it would have been had he lived to see it completed. Most affecting of all, at the end, he had accepted that he was about to die and closed this final epistle, this auto-eulogy, with dignity and, indeed, happiness.

Thus it was with turbulent emotions that I watched what will essentially stand as his final complete work, excluding the one-minute short he made for NHK. Apart from one last episode of Paranoia Agent I’ll watch in the coming days and that little short, watching Paprika means that I have seen everything Satoshi Kon directed, a distressingly short corpus, and rank Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress and especially Paranoia Agent as amongst the best anime I have ever seen. So it pains me to say that Paprika, for me, doesn’t match up at all.

There are many ways in which I can sing its praises: it is utterly beautiful, smoothly animated, consummately drawn and shows fantastic imagery that brings wonderment still exclusive to animated films. The voice acting is pitch-perfect, from seiyuu of great standing like Hayashibara Megumi to Kon himself in a cameo role alongside the novelist who wrote the original story. The concept, too, is fascinating, made of very similar stuff to what made Inception such a success: a machine has been invented which allows people to enter the dreams of others and explore their psyches for information, used here for psychotherapeutic reasons. Of course, the machines go missing, abused in the hands of people with nefarious agendas, and chaos ensues.

There are some appealing characters here and some stunning, memorable visuals. But the trouble is that the plot is so poor. It’s clear from early on who is going to be the self-appointed defender of dreams, and there’s really no good reason for dreams to start pouring into reality. A lot of characters, like the police inspector, are left underdeveloped even when their backstories get laid out, and the chanting of nonsense gets old very quickly.

But the real problem is comparing this with Kon’s other films. Even Perfect Blue, similarly dark and strange, had strong emotional content and a sort of appealing innocence. Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress are both heartfelt, full of affection and fondness and warmth, even if they take darker turns or face a grim reality. In Paprika everything seems to be at arm’s length. The main characters are all aloof and professional, and the protagonist even splits herself into two distinct parts. The only naïve and innocent character is soon turned mad and trundles about detached from everything for the climactic final act. And the problem with removing reality from the equation is that makes it extremely hard to find points of identification and empathy. This is Paprika’s problem, and the reason why it does not quite stand with all the rest of the great man’s finest works.

Tokyo Godfathers

Today I watched Tokyo Godfathers, from Kon Satoshi, the director behind Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paranoia Agent. And while I’ve really enjoyed all of those works, I think this is the one I’ve found most striking and enjoyed the most.

The story is simple and down-to-earth: three homeless residents of Tokyo who are closer than they care to admit have their lives profoundly changed when they find an abandoned baby and decide to take it back to its mother.

The three characters, who don’t really fit the term ‘Godfathers’ (derived from an old Western movie the plot riffs upon called ‘Three Godfathers’, also remade by John Ford), are an acerbic drunkard with a painful past, an unconvincing and rather grotesque transsexual (as usual ‘okama’ being a very difficult word to translate, especially without sounding more hateful than is appropriate) and a teenaged girl who is pitched perfectly as flawed, prickly and yet sympathetic all through her growth during the film. It plays out like a more mature, more heartfelt version of the episode of Paranoia Agent with the misfit members of the suicide club – and that was an excellent episode.

Beautiful Madhouse artwork, especially in the backgrounds, some superb, mature pacing and quirky characters make a meandering plot extremely gripping and never does the film get dull. As usual, Kon Satoshi explores some of the darker and more disturbing areas of Japanese society not often dealt with in anime, from immigrant ghettoes and child-snatchers to horrible teenagers who get their kicks hunting down and beating up defenceless old tramps, and shines brief spotlights on things like Christmas traditions, runaways and the dangers of gambling.

Normally, coincidence in plotting annoys me, but in this comedy it was not only acceptable, but an integral part of the plot because it was exaggerated to the point it became integral. Ultimately, the darkness and maturity of the tone were only spice to the sweetness and fun of the comedy and feel-good revelatory moments, making for true richness.

Everything Kon Satoshi has done I have been extremely impressed by. Must check out Paprika too…